Seneca Lake Diary Summaries were mailed out last week. I received mine today. The good news, which those of us who've been fishing Seneca Lake over the past few years have known, is that the fishing has bounced back to form here. Eighty-three percent of trips resulted in at least one legal salmonid caught. Catch rates were 1.9 hours per legal salmonid. These are the best catch rates on Seneca Lake since 2011! My hat's off to Brad Hammers and the whole crew at DEC, who worked hard to complete successful lamprey treatments that have revitalized this lake. The lamprey treatments are very labor-intensive and DEC Crews come from around the state to help out. There's a lot more information on the summary, which should show up on the DEC website in a month or two.
On the negative side of things, only 14 anglers kept books this year. The number of diary cooperators dropped off a lot over the past 10 years as the fishing here got progressively worse. If you plan on fishing this lake with any regularity over the next season, please think about keeping a book here.
Lastly, I have not been posting my "availability" due to the uncertainty of the weather. I will get back to posting open dates once the weather gets warmer and somewhat more consistent. As I look ahead at the 10-day forecast, the following days are open and look to be potentially good days to get out:
Thursday March 19th, Saturday the 21st, Tuesday the 24th - Thursday the 26th, Friday the 27th, Sunday the 29th - Tuesday 31st.
All of these dates feature good conditions for casting/fly-casting for salmon on Seneca Lake and jigging for lake trout on Cayuga!